The End of Overeating by David Kessler

I suppose Dr Kessler will be rather pleased with the timing of the NICE report which chimes perfectly with the contents of his latest text, ‘The End of Overeating’. This is a clear an indictment of the food industry as you will find, and a clear scientific explanation as to the obesity time-bomb we are witnessing across the planet. In the face of powerful industry lobbying, governments have been profoundly weak in tackling the problem, but research such as Kessler’s will make it ever harder for governments to look the other way. After hundreds of thousands of deaths at the hands of the big tobacco, governments were forced to act. Sooner, rather than later, the food industry will need to be brought to heal, possibly by the threat of class action style litigation.

Even the Daily Telegraph 22/6/10 was moved to report on its front page the human toll of obesity at the hands of a rapacious food industry. 40,000 deaths each year in Britain makes our casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan look tame by comparison. Kessler’s book is already an international best seller and will surely make the drug pushers working for the global food giants feel the growing heat. The three drugs in question are arguably the three most harmful drugs on the planet; salt, fat and sugar. In combination Kessler explains, their effects are deadly.

Part One of Kessler’s study is simply entitled ‘Sugar, Fat, Salt’, and in this opening section Kessler leaves the reader in no doubt about just how dangerous a combined over-abundance of these three ingredients in our food can be to the human system. Under the sub-heading, ‘The business of Food’, Kessler reports:

‘Higher sugar, fat and salt make you want to eat more’, a high-level food industry executive told me. I had already read this in the scientific literature, and heard it in conversations with neuroscientists and psychologists. Now an insider was saying the same thing. My source was a leading food designer, a Henry Ford of mass produced food who had agreed to part the curtain for me, at least a bit, to reveal how the industry operates. Explaining that the food industry creates dishes to hit what he called the three points of the compass. Sugar, fat and salt make a food compelling, said the designer. They make it indulgent. They make it high in hedonic value, which gives us pleasure.

Kessler then asked the all-important question:

‘Do you design food to be highly hedonic?’

The reply was equally blunt:

‘Oh, absolutely, we try to bring as much as that into the equation as possible.’ P18

Not only is the food industry deliberately creating highly desirable food products that we can barely resist but these foods tend to be highly addictive. Kessler explains:

‘Rewarding foods tend to be reinforcing, meaning that they keep us coming back for more. I put an M&M in my mouth, it tastes good, and I return for another. The sugar and fat in the candy reinforce my desire to keep eating.’ Using extensive tests with animals it was found that sugar, fat and salt were highly reinforcing substances. So not only do they make processed food products taste good they keep us coming back for more and more and more.’

Part two of Kessler’s study zooms right in on the culprits; the food industry, and it is here that we should be most incensed because it is here that we find we are being deliberately hooked to the combined drug effect of salt, sugar and fat in our diets. Kessler explains:

The food industry understands exactly what it’s doing when it markets foods with such compelling imagery, said my source. In the face of the pleasure that pizza promises, consumers suspend more rational thought and are drawn in the indulgence of it. The pleasure becomes a distraction, directing attention away from thoughts of a food’s fat or caloric content. P79

Kessler’s source within the food industry nails the strategy square on the head:

Indulgence is the primary driver in premium products. Generally, they’re higher in flavour and often higher in fat, and a lot of imagery goes with them. It’s a very profitable place for the food and beverage industry. P79

The self indictment continues:

In marketing indulgence, the industry knows something about us that we don’t fully know about ourselves. It knows that when we walk into a restaurant, we’re seeking much more than a satisfying meal. We are hoping for a respite from daily pressures, and restaurants cater to that with food, imagery, and atmosphere that keeps us entertained. In a world where people often feel under stress, the consultant said, Food is escape more and more. The more the food industry behaves like the entertainment industry, the more profitable it is.’ P80

Kessler continues:

Knowing that it’s not enough to simply hand customers a packet of sugar or pat of butter, the restaurant industry has spent a great deal of time learning the most effective ways to incorporate the core ingredients of sugar, fat and salt into its products. P87

And Kessler adds the obvious corollary:

And of course at the traditional fast-food chains, which account for a sizable majority of the nation’s $333billion restaurant food industry, combinations of sugar, fat and salt are ubiquitous.’ P86

Kessler proceeds to present a powerful indictment of the food industry that is behaving every bit as calculatingly and callously as the tobacco industry. And just as thirty years ago most smokers had not the slightest idea that they were being deliberately hooked onto the nicotine drug, so it is with our lack of awareness of the dangers lurking within our processed foods.

Kessler reports:

Chemical-intensive food processing evolved to extend the shelf-life of products and to lower food costs. More recently, however, the industry has directed its creative chemistry towards increasing sensation and consumer satisfaction. It’s all about impact. Manufacturers today have the capacity to add almost any sensory effect imaginable to their foods and in particular, to incorporate multiple sensations in a single product. P118

Kessler then Quotes another industry insider who is very specific:

Processed foods give you more freedom. You can add anything you want. You can turn the dials to get the fat right, to get the sugar right, to get the salt right. P121

Kessler leaves his readers in no doubt about what is being done to them and why:

It’s hardly news that the food we eat, and the way it’s presented are the handiwork of an industry whose goal is to make profit. What’s striking is the many ingenious ways in which the industry succeeds. One venture capitalist did not mince his words when he talked about its intent. The goal is to get you hooked,’ P125

A good deal of Kessler’s work revolves around the science of how the food industry is manipulating or rewiring our brain processes to convince us we need to eat more and to eat more often. I am not well placed to do this science justice but I urge a wide reading of his research which has made him something of a celebrity amongst health campaigners world-wide. All of this has great import to the question of a healthy populous. It’s no good governments banging on about sporting legacies and increasing our physical activities if we are being deliberately poisoned by the global food industry. For a while an active lifestyle will mitigate against some of the worst effects of our processed foods but sooner or later the deadly combination of excessive sugar, salt and fat will take its toll. With an annual death toll of forty thousand and growing, the grim reaper, fully paid by the profit seeking food giants, is already doing his job.

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